MLB

CAN’T COUNT ON STARTS LIKE THIS

AS Andy Pettitte might have said after allowing 10 runs in 62/3 innings yesterday to the Royals if he were Randy Johnson: “I gave my team a chance to win.”

Except that Pettitte is not Johnson. Except that after the Yankees came back from 10-6 down in the seventh inning and 11-10 down in the bottom of the ninth to win 12-11 on Johnny Damon’s sixth hit and fourth RBI of the afternoon, No. 46 said nothing of the kind.

“From my end, it was just another disappointing day,” Pettitte, whose ERA ballooned to a Big Unit-sized 4.99, said after his team’s second walk-off victory in the last three days. “I don’t know . . . it seems like everything I try to do is not the right thing to do.

“I’m thankful we won the game today. I need to get better. I’m not doing my job real well at all.”

The bats are stirring up and down a lineup stoked by Jorge Posada’s return from the disabled list, Jason Giambi’s return as a threat and Damon’s presence at the top of the order, following Alex Rodriguez’s return to health last month. It is, however, Damon who has provided the ignition for the team’s offensive lift-off.

Get this. Wallowing in a .250 mire on May 20, Damon is now at .326 after recording his 10th multi-hit performance in his last 15 starts, a stretch in which he has gone 34-for-67 with four three-hit games, one four-hit game and this 6-for-6 deliverance in the Bronx steam bath.

For his next trick, Damon will call his shot at the All-Star Game next month at Yankee Stadium.

Still, the Yankees are only 31-31, an accurate reflection of a season in which it has been a two-step dance of win two, lose three, win three, lose two. It has been a muscle-memory of the opening 10 weeks of last season, when the team also split its first 62 games, when the rotation devolved into chaos before the first heat wave.

Like now.

In 2003, the final season of Pettitte I, the Yankees’ starters led the AL in innings pitched. Now, they are last in the league, getting just 52/3 per game from their starters. That’s too much – or too little – to overcome on a consistent basis.

True, Pettitte has given the Yankees innings – at least six in 11 of 13 starts – even if not nearly as many quality ones as the Yankees require from the titular ace of the staff and the pitcher whose decision to re-up for 2008 gave management another lame excuse to pass on Johan Santana.

Today, it will be Joba Chamberlain in his second big league start, one in which he will be limited to “75-to-80” pitches, as per Girardi. Next time maybe the manager will also disclose the scouting report off of which Chamberlain will work.

And to think that a year ago, GM Brian Cashman publicly all but bashed Joe Torre for revealing, and in the most general terms, the conditions of the Joba Rules that were in effect at the time.

It makes one believe that it wasn’t the message being delivered that annoyed Cashman so much as the messenger delivering it.

Then again, perhaps Girardi should have announced that Pettitte was on a 110-pitch count yesterday, for Jose Guillen smacked the lefty’s 111th (and last) toss of the day into the lower stands in left for the two-out grand slam that gave the Royals a 10-6 lead in the seventh. It was Guillen’s second homer of the day.

“The bottom line is, it was Andy’s game to win or lose,” Girardi said when asked if he had second thoughts about allowing Pettitte to remain in the game. “I’m not concerned about Andy; he’ll get it right.”

The bottom line is, it was Damon’s game to win after the starting pitcher did not do his job well enough. Again.

larry.brooks@nypost.com